


In Your Hands

by Highly_Illogical



Series: A Whole New World [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Divination, Hand Kisses, Holding Hands, M/M, Scars, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 08:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11181273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Highly_Illogical/pseuds/Highly_Illogical
Summary: A tentative touch somehow turns into an impromptu palmistry session, and Credence finds out there might be a future for him and Mr. Graves after all.





	In Your Hands

Credence’s new life seemed to be made of nothing but catching up, and he didn’t mean just on his magic, although he now spent large chunks of his time practicing with desperate single-mindedness and trying to forget the pang of shame that gripped him when he remembered that a child half his age could probably do better.

Even when he ate, every bite meant catching up on what real food was supposed to taste like, or perhaps simply catching up on the foreign concept of eating because you _wanted_ to and not because you _needed_ to, and enjoying it to boot.

And so it was, with the excuse that Credence couldn’t very well set up residence in the library, that he found himself face to face with Mr. Graves in the farthest corner of a No-Maj diner. That was nothing new: provided that they limit themselves to the non-magical side of the city to escape notice, these regular excursions were rapidly becoming the highlight of his days. New York was oddly beautiful with him by his side, teeming with life he’d never had the energy to see, brighter, even, as if he’d never truly looked at its colors.

Oh, they had to be careful, of course, but that only made it more exciting. It made pastrami on rye taste like the forbidden fruit, and just like the forbidden fruit, once you ate it, there was no way back, not that he wanted to go back in the first place.

“You’re smiling.” There was no derision, no _What are you smiling at?_ , no promise of bad things to come. It was fact. “I think you’re getting better at that.”

That threw him for a loop. How did one get better at smiling? It wasn’t a spell you could try over and over until you got it right. He’d certainly been smiling more often as of late (and when he considered the cause, somehow, Mr. Graves was always in the picture), but he’d never thought of it as ‘getting better’.

“I suppose…” he scrambled for the right words, “I suppose my face was out of practice.”

“Then there’s only one thing for it—we’ll have to make sure you get plenty.”

Their fingers met halfway across the table and Credence withdrew from the touch as if burnt before he could even think. Mr. Graves looked… alarmed? Disappointed? Maybe a little bit of both?

Either way, he’d made a mistake. He realized now, half a second too late, that he’d probably meant it in an encouraging way, that perhaps his intention had been to get him to smile some more, and half of him thought he’d been wrong to pull away.

But the other half protested loudly that this was _different_ , this wasn’t a casual hand on the shoulder intended to bolster his plummeting confidence when his newfound magic wouldn’t do as he said, or an accidental brush of fingers as he passed the salt. This felt more… intimate, and Ma’s voice in the back of his mind ranting and raving about sin had very little to do with it.

“What’s wrong, Credence?”

He wanted to put together an answer, but words failed him.

It had been a long time since Credence looked at his hands and saw something that another person would want to reach out and touch. Many times, in the quiet of the library, when the pages tried to whisper the secrets of magic to him but he was too tired to understand them after a long day, he’d mused that his hands were a book too, one that told his history to anyone who might look, provided that they didn’t turn away in disgust. He wasn’t sure he was ready to let anyone touch that history.

“If you’re uncomfortable in any way, all you have to do is tell me, you know.”

Oh, he did know. That had been their first rule, established mostly for their own safety—you never knew what could unleash the raging flood of darkness slumbering under his skin and always ready to wake up and reduce everything to rubble and dust if it saw fit. But that wasn’t the case; the thing had hardly stirred, and the diner would live to see another day.

“No, it’s not that, it’s just…”

“Hmm?” He didn’t press further—just an interested sort of noise that wasn’t quite a question, as though Credence were a conundrum to be solved.

“I don’t… I don’t think I like my hands very much.”

“Oh.”

He expected Mr. Graves to say something – what, he didn’t know –, but he was met with silence. Perhaps he knew that any words would fall short of their goal, because all he proffered instead was his own hand, palm up, oddly hesitant for a man who had made exuding confidence into an art, as if presenting an invisible gift that he wasn’t certain Credence would like.

A silent offer, or a request, or maybe both— _can we try this all over again?_

Credence’s fingers twitched in an aborted response, like trying to say yes and no at the same time and failing to do both.

“You know,” said Mr. Graves a little too casually, “there are wizards who claim they can see your future in your hands.”

Credence looked around in alarm at his mention of the word ‘wizards’ in a No-Maj establishment, but life seemed to go on as usual. It was often like that with Mr. Graves, as if they were the only two people in the world. He suspected it was a spell that made everyone else’s eyes slide right over them, rather than the permanent state of hurry and disinterest that seemed to permeate New York.

“My future?”

His food lay completely forgotten as he contemplated that. It wasn’t impossible, of course—Credence had given up on the concept of ‘impossible’ by now. The man who had been wearing Mr. Graves’s face, he was reminded unpleasantly, claimed he had visions of it. But if his future had anything to do with his hands, Credence thought bitterly, then it had to be a bleak one.

“Haven’t you come across palmistry in your studies?”

“Yes.” He thought it wiser not to say that he’d shut the book and wanted nothing more to do with it, because spending that much time examining his own hands or anyone else’s was an exercise he could happily do without. Instead, he looked at his palms and spat out: “But I thought you could only see my past in here.” It came out angrier than he’d planned.

“Maybe we can try to get a glimpse of both.”

His hand was still extended, waiting, tempting, and the journey to the other side of the table felt miles long, but as it ended, he was struck by the odd passing thought that they seemed to _fit_.

“Well,” he said. His fingers felt warm as they turned his hand over for a closer look, and they supported his own firmly, but without coming even close to crushing them. “Well, well, well. Isn’t that interesting?”

Credence had never truly been interesting to anyone before, and if he looked down at where their hands met, he certainly saw nothing that matched that description. All he saw was the painfully familiar pattern of lines that shouldn’t have been there in the first place, old and faded, but still there to remind him of _her_. It made Credence think of the cracks in a vase that had gone to pieces and had been mended sloppily. What sort of future could he see underneath all of that?

“I’m—I’m sorry, but… what’s so interesting?”

“See this?”

Ever so gently, Mr. Graves traced a line from his wrist to the delicate flesh between his index finger and thumb, and Credence went very still, willing himself not to call off the whole thing. He hadn’t reckoned with the fact that palmistry involved this much touching. Surely it couldn’t be pleasant for him to run his stronger, healthier fingers over such an ugly mess. He wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d been the one to pull away and proclaim this was a bad idea, but he did no such thing.

“This, Credence, is called your life line.”

What an important name for something so small. “What does it say?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out. See here, where it’s broken?”

But Credence shuddered at the ghost of a touch at the base of the line and shut his eyes tightly, wanting to see no more. He’d said it. _Broken_.

“No, no, no, shh, that’s not what I meant at all. It doesn’t say there’s anything wrong with you, see—it’s a sign of hardship. Sounds more like the past than the future to me. But here…” his finger trailed up and up, and Credence chanced another look. “Here your life line is forked, and that means a significant change. I do believe we’ve moved on to the present.”

Well, he could hardly dispute _that_. “And then?”

“And then, if the line goes this way…” he followed it all the way up and Credence found himself holding his breath, though perhaps the prospect of discovering his fate was not to blame. It probably had a lot more to do with Mr. Graves’s touch, but that sort of thought was a territory best left unexplored. “It means recognition and success in your endeavors. See, that wasn’t so bad.”

His stomach gave an odd little flutter. He’d been promised success and recognition once before, and he’d wanted it so badly to ring true, but it had all turned out hollow. _You will be honored among wizards forever…_ an illusion that was as empty as it was pretty.

But Mr. Graves was smiling, an honest smile that had never graced _his_ features, and when he smiled, Credence didn’t have to remind himself that it wasn’t the same man.

“Do you think it’s true?”

“The rest of it sounded pretty close to the truth to me, so why not this? And now—”

“There’s more?”

Mr. Graves took the interruption in stride, and Credence allowed himself a moment to be pleasantly shocked at what a long way he’d come from the timid boy who used to shrink back when he so much as dared speak out of turn, expecting to be struck for his infraction any minute.

“Oh, yes. So, so much more.” Somehow, he got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about his hand. “Let’s see what’s next, shall we?”

But instead of another gentle explanation came a moment of silence, and then the tiniest of sighs as he brushed his thumb across his palm, somewhere below the base of his fingers. As soft skin met the coarse remains of a past best forgotten, Credence guessed what the problem was.

“Is it… harder to read when it’s like this?”

“Harder, easier—perhaps a bit of both. This is the hand of someone who’s been hurt, Credence, and no, I don’t mean physically, though I suppose it’s fitting that most of your old scars run right across your love line.”

His breath caught in his throat. “Is… is that what it’s called?”

“Love line, heart line, whichever you prefer. And one that starts right here,” a slight pressure underneath his middle finger, “indicates a need to be loved.”

Credence felt rather like he’d been on the receiving end of a spell that left him without a stitch on his body. Did he know, then, how he yearned for the warm undercurrent of pride in Mr. Graves’s voice when his progress pleased him, and how he found himself looking more at him than at the book he was supposed to be studying on some days when they shared the companionable silence of the library?

“It doesn’t mean you’re weak, Credence.” Mr. Graves’s hand slipped out from under his, and he tapped his own palm in demonstration. “See? Same thing.”

His heart gave a leap, as it always did when he found they had something in common. He’d even tried to drink his coffee the same way as him with the flimsy excuse that sugar was an indulgence, but that particular experiment had been a failure.

Had he been brave, he would have said that the short span of time they’d spent living together was the closest he’d ever been to fulfilling that need, and… and that if it was indeed a need they shared, then Mr. Graves’s problems were over, because he loved him quite enough.

But Credence wasn’t brave, and so what came out was a pathetic: “What’s next, Mr. Graves?” that left him kicking himself.

The other man raised his free hand as if to stop him in his tracks. “Next,” he said, “you finally learn to call me Percival, or I won’t tell you the rest of it.”

That had been a point of contention for some time: Credence could see how it would make sense to address the man he was living with by his given name, but ‘Mr. Graves’ kept rolling naturally off his tongue as if he’d been born to be called that and nothing else.

“I can try.” He couldn’t bring himself to promise more. He knew he’d slip back into old habits the moment he stopped thinking about it.

“Good enough for me. Then, next comes your head line, that—” As he spoke, he traced another line almost playfully across his palm, a little lower, that left his skin tingling and made laughter bubble up unbidden to his lips.

“It tickles!”

“There goes that smile again. See, practice makes perfect.”

Another moment of silence as the pieces fell together and Credence realized a beat too late that he’d referred to his smile and used the word ‘perfect’ almost in the same breath, and he was probably supposed to say something to that, but his mind came up empty.

“What about my head line, _Percival_?” A knight’s name, a snippet of his readings supplied. Well, he’d certainly done nicely in the rescuing department.

“A definite curve there, I didn’t take you for such a romantic.” He chuckled, and traitorous heat rushed up to Credence’s cheeks. “In all seriousness, though, your head line says a lot about your mind—openness to new ideas, well, that’s a given, I’ve never seen a more enthusiastic student, and possibly a sign of creativity… have you ever considered taking up some artistic hobbies?”

“Art? Me?”

“Why not?”

Because art meant making something beautiful, and right until that moment, with his hand still in Percival’s, he’d been convinced he couldn’t even touch anything beautiful without ruining it. But, once again, that wasn’t what he said.

“I never learnt. Can you teach me?”

“I’m afraid you won’t learn much from me. Art was never my strong suit.”

“I bet that was Divination, then.”

To his surprise, Percival laughed. “Are you kidding me? I was pants at it.”

That stole his breath. More empty words, then, bringing the bitter aftertaste of betrayal. “But all the things you said…”

“Well, I do remember _some_ of that stuff, and as for the rest, you looked like you needed some help seeing your hands in a better light, and I’m not above cheating to get you to do that. For those of us who don’t have true Sight, half of Divination is looking like you know what you’re saying.” He put on a mystical sort of voice that didn’t suit him at all and pressed gently into the fleshy mound at the base of his thumb. “The mount of Venus. Love. Romance. Passion. Sensuality.”

He lifted his hand and bent his head to meet it halfway, and the butterfly touch of his lips swiftly replaced his fingers. Credence might not know the first thing about reading palms, but he was pretty sure the practice didn’t involve _kissing_ them.

**Author's Note:**

> WHAT AM I EVEN DOING THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SO MUCH SHORTER SOMEBODY HELP ME.
> 
> There, I said it.
> 
> I know nothing about palmistry, I just found [these](http://psychiclibrary.com/beyondBooks/palmistry-room/) handy little lists, pun very much intended, and literally did all the work backwards, picking and choosing traits that fit either the character or the situation I wanted to create. My portrayal is probably dead wrong and I apologize.
> 
> This also happens to be the first piece I wrote and published in which two men are attracted to each other and actually do something about it. The fact that it was posted during Pride Month is entirely coincidental.


End file.
